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A fresh examination of one of the most contentious issues in runic scholarship - magical or not? The runic alphabet, in use for well over a thousand years, was employed by various Germanic groups in a variety of ways, including, inevitably, for superstitious and magical rites. Formulaic runic words were inscribed onto small items that could be carried for good luck; runic charms were carved on metal or wooden amulets to ensure peace or prosperity. There are invocations and allusions to pagan and Christian gods and heroes, to spirits of disease, and even to potential lovers. Few such texts are completely unique to Germanic society, and in fact, most of the runic amulets considered in this book show wide-ranging parallels from a variety of European cultures. The question of whether runes were magical or not has divided scholarship in the area. Early criticism embraced fantastic notions of runic magic - leading not just to a healthy scepticism, but in some cases to a complete denial of any magical element whatsoever in the runic inscriptions. This book seeks to re-evaulate the whole question of runic sorcery, attested to not only in the medieval Norse literature dealing with runes but primarily in the fascinating magical texts of the runic inscriptions themselves. Dr MINDY MCLEOD teaches in the Department of Linguistics, Deakin University, Melbourne; Dr BERNARD MEES teaches in the Department of History at the University of Melbourne.

Runes. --- Amulets. --- Magic. --- Inscriptions, Runic. --- Runic inscriptions --- Inscriptions, Norse --- Runes --- Magick --- Necromancy --- Sorcery --- Spells --- Occultism --- Archaeology --- Demonology --- Magic --- Superstition --- Witchcraft --- Charms --- Talismans --- Futhark --- Futhorc --- Futhork --- Runic alphabets --- Alphabet --- Paleography --- Inscriptions, Runic --- Germanic Groups. --- Magic Objects. --- Magical Inscriptions. --- Magical Texts. --- Medieval Norse Literature. --- Runic Alphabet. --- Runic Amulets. --- Superstitious Rites.

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"One of the world's preeminent cultural anthropologists leaves a last work that fundamentally reconfigures how we study most other cultures. From the perspective of Western modernity, humanity inhabits a disenchanted cosmos. Gods, spirits, and ancestors have left us for a transcendent beyond, no longer living in our midst and being involved in all matters of everyday life from the trivial to the dire. Yet the vast majority of cultures throughout human history treat spirits as very real persons, members of a cosmic society who interact with humans and control their fate. In most cultures, even today, people are but a small part of an enchanted universe misconstrued by the transcendent categories of "religion" and the "supernatural." The New Science of the Enchanted Universe shows how anthropologists and other social scientists must rethink these cultures of immanence and study them by their own lights.In this, his last, revelatory book, Marshall Sahlins announces a new method and sets an exciting agenda for the field. He takes readers around the world, from Inuit of the Arctic Circle to pastoral Dinka of East Africa, from Arawete swidden gardeners of Amazonia to Trobriand Island horticulturalists. In the process, Sahlins sheds new light on classical and contemporary ethnographies that describe these cultures of immanence and reveals how even the apparently mundane, all-too-human spheres of "economics" and "politics" emerge as people negotiate with, and ultimately usurp, the powers of the gods.The New Science of the Enchanted Universe offers a road map for a new practice of anthropology that takes seriously the enchanted universe and its transformations from ancient Mesopotamia to contemporary America"-- "The vast majority of human societies known to us have been organized along "immanentist" lines. In such societies, as Marshall Sahlins argues, everything we associate with religion, gods and spirits of every sort is part of the daily, embodied (immanent) lives of people. Plants and animals have souls and the same essential attributes as other persons, and supposedly long-dead ancestors continue to live among people, communicate with them, and have sway over the course of events. In this "enchanted" type of society, there is no strict separation between economics, politics, religion, philosophy, and culture. Some 2,500 years ago, at the dawn of the so-called Axial Age, a radical transformation in human societies began when civilizations spread around the globe from their origins in Greece, the Near East, northern India, and China. These civilizations effected a cultural revolution, creating a new type of society in which the things we typically associate with religion move from immanent infrastructure to transcendent superstructure. Only in a transcendentalist society does it make sense to speak of a god or God, and of a heaven, "out there," "above us," or in a separate realm entirely. And only in such a society do we have a division of labour separating out an economic sphere from a political sphere and a sphere of culture. Transcendentalist worldviews and modes of life are, of course, pervasive today. They are so much a part of who we are that when we attempt to understand the nature and workings of immanentist societies, we often misdescribe them in transcendentalist terms. This confusion, observes Sahlins, has long bedeviled the social sciences and consequently has impeded our understanding of many Indigenous religions and worldviews past and present. Sahlins, drawing on a vast array of recent and older ethnographic and historical research, offers this book as both diagnosis of these ills and a call to correction-to develop a "new science" that would be better positioned to grasp the realities of immanentist societies, and to take seriously the cultures of others"--

Anthropology of religion. --- Acculturation. --- Ambivalence. --- Ancient Mesopotamian religion. --- Animism. --- Anthropologist. --- Axial Age. --- City-state. --- Civilization. --- Concept. --- Confucius. --- Consciousness. --- Copernican Revolution (metaphor). --- Cosmogony. --- Cousin marriage. --- Cultural relativism. --- Culture hero. --- Deference. --- Deity. --- Deus otiosus. --- Disenchantment. --- Divinity. --- Early modern period. --- Ekur. --- Empirical evidence. --- Energy (esotericism). --- Enki. --- Enlil. --- Epitome. --- Ethnography. --- Explanation. --- Fertility. --- Fountain of Life. --- Genius loci. --- God. --- Great power. --- Honorific. --- Igloo. --- Illustration. --- Immanence. --- Immortality. --- In This World. --- Inua. --- Inuit. --- Invisibility. --- Luck. --- Magic (paranormal). --- Magical texts. --- Mainspring. --- Marsupial. --- Matricide. --- Matrilateral. --- Mervyn Meggitt. --- Metahuman. --- Modernity. --- Morpheme. --- Mother goddess. --- Multitude. --- Natural language. --- New Caledonia. --- New Guinea. --- Nidaba. --- Ninhursag. --- Ninurta. --- Normal science. --- Nuliajuk. --- Ontology. --- Otherworld. --- Pantheism. --- Personal god. --- Personhood. --- Phenomenon. --- Potentate. --- Proscription. --- Reincarnation. --- Relevance. --- Religion. --- Religiosity. --- Reproduction. --- Rite. --- Rodney Needham. --- Ruler. --- Science. --- Scientist. --- Shamanism. --- Spirit. --- Subjectivity. --- Supernatural. --- Supplication. --- Supreme Being. --- The New Science. --- The Other Hand. --- The Transcendentalist. --- The Various. --- Theory. --- Thought. --- Transcendence (religion). --- Transcendental idealism. --- Transcendentalism. --- Vision quest. --- Western esotericism.